Particularly insidious

Very good take-down of Edward Said (and review of Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West). I don’t always agree with Peter Berkowitz (much less the Hoover Institution) but I do here.

Like the book it introduces, the preface exhibits a master propagandist at work, as he weaves together moderate and reasonable pronouncements with obscurantist rhetoric and sophisticated invective.

That’s how it’s done, of course – mixing the two so that the reasonable stuff provides cover for the obscurantist rhetoric.

Certainly, Said’s conclusions can be convenient. Learning Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, and studying the Koran and Islamic jurisprudence, Muslim poetry and philosophy, and the social and political structures and history of the peoples of the Middle East are exacting and arduous labors. It’s much easier to forgo all that hard work and instead, following Said who follows Foucault, proclaim that such learning and study inevitably falsify their subject matter and ineluctably contribute to the domination of cultures that the Western mind can never hope to understand. Better not to engage in systematic study of Arabs and Muslims, and better still to take one’s stand against those who do. In this way, Said and his disciples stand the scholarly vocation on its head, transforming the self-imposition and social enforcement of ignorance into intellectual and moral virtues.

Edward Said, the great Palestinian-American scholar commented that racism against Arabs is the last acceptable form of racism in the U.S. Arabs are constructed as the Other, dark and evil.

Uh huh. Barsamian ought to visit Saudi Arabia sometime if he wants to see some real Othering.

There’s one passage that every scholar, journalist, popularizer, and educator should learn by heart.

Said’s brand of propaganda is particularly insidious. Although he presents himself as a heroic defender of liberal learning and systematic scholarship, he conjures egregious misrepresentations and promulgates toxic misunderstandings, thereby undermining the separation between scholarly vocation and partisan pleading in defense of which he purports to write.

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18 Responses to “Particularly insidious”

Edward Said, the great Palestinian-American scholar commented that racism against Arabs is the last acceptable form of racism in the U.S. Arabs are constructed as the Other, dark and evil.

Well, I don’t know about “last acceptable,” but it is a common form of racism in the U.S. The existence of brutal Othering of women in Saudi Arabia doesn’t negate that. In fact it co-thrives with it. People are all too willing to believe that Saudi women’s oppression is a spontaneous and inevitable artifact of “culture” rather than a product of political and economic power games.

Which doesn’t take away from your point that Said is overrated. He is. Though not as overrated as Foucault.

Fully as overrated as Foucault, as Ibn Warraq shows, page by page. Perhaps more overrated than Foucault, if you really want to get down to brass tacks.

As for Othering in the US. Well, there has been some cause, has there not, for seeing the Muslim as other, as dark and as evil? And so long as Saudi Arabia holds the keys to Islam, this is going to continue, for the extreme Islam noised abroad by Saudi Arabia (a university in Australia has recently caved in to Saudi demands), is largely the source of the idiotic cartoon controversy.

I won’t say that the US hasn’t exacerbated what was already a sticky situation by its war in Iraq — Afghanistan is arguably a different case — but until the threats against democratic freedoms stop, people are going to look upon Muslims with vague alarm. To call it racist when it is a religious matter is carrying it too far. It doesn’t matter where extremists come from, whether Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia or Turkey (and there is a growing number there)– and there are a few white Western converts who manage to make it into the big time Islamist camp — they must know that they are creating Otherness in themselves. It’s too bad that it has to rub off on the majority (that’s what we’re always told, but they seldom speak up) who just want to live in peace.

Well, there has been some cause, has there not, for seeing the Muslim as other, as dark and as evil?

No. Not least because there’s no such thing as “the Muslim,” but also because Christianity has done far more damage to the West than Islam has.

And the war with Iraq is hardly the extent of US “exacerbation” in the Middle East–let’s not forget that the US created the Taliban and is the prop of Saudi hegemony in the Middle East as well.

that’s what we’re always told, but they seldom speak up

How do you know they “seldom speak up,” especially when there are often powerful interests that don’t want them to be heard? Recently in the news, we’ve seen protestors for democracy and civil rights in Pakistan (opposed by the U.S., might I add). Yet they and their work seldom got coverage in the U.S. until it began challenging a U.S.-backed crackdown.

Aside from which, Said doesn’t talk about othering “the Muslim”; he talks ab out othering what used to be called “the Orient“, which is a racial category and not a religious one.

Well, the US in the form of the Bush admin has been supporting Musharraf all this time, not the protestors for democracy and civil rights in Pakistan that Jenavir mentioned. I link to news and opinion pieces about that sometimes – maybe I should do it more often.

Jenavir, the Othering I had in mind wasn’t just women but also servants, especially foreign ones. I would have been able to take Salaida more seriously if he’d breathed a word about that (and if he hadn’t talked about ArabsandMuslims as if they were interchangeable one minute, and then solemnly informed us that they were not the same thing the next; and if he hadn’t sounded so pleased with himself; and a few more things).

Yes, Salaita forgets the othering of women and foreign workers. But he also plays games with words. Anti-semitism, in Western discourse, refers to the othering of Jews, and he knows it. So, when people talk about anti-Semitism in Arab countries, they mean anti-Jewish prejudice. And it’s there. So why play word games about it? Anyway, do people take racial categories like Semite seriously anymore?

DFG. Yes, Muslims have done a good job othering themselves. Some Muslims or ex-Muslims in Britain recently wondered why democracy and Islam seemed so at odds. Indian democracy, though not a shining light in some ways, is a working democracy. Pakistan has never seemed to manage it. Clearly, former Muslims like Ayan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq think there are problems with Islam and democracy too. And many of the Muslim voices heard in the West do not sound friendly towards the freedoms that are fundamental to our democratic polities. Is this just my perception? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m just a red-neck fanatic, but I am alarmed.

Not at all are you a red-neck fanatic. Islam at odds with democracy? Perhaps, but not in the country with more Muslims than any other. They have their nutjobs, too. But in general, the signs are positive.

I have a tendency to view the likes of AHA and the mad-mullah-types as squeaky wheels (please don’t take this as making them equivalent). Wheels that the media can pick up on. Hence, a tendency to a rather polarised or simplified view of Islam. This is what drives the othering.

A local example: I lived for 17years in the same street as a mosque, my grandmother lived around the corner for 35years. Not until certain events in 2001 did a fuss started to get raised. Who “othered” these guys?

Squeaky wheels? That’s all it is then?! No one really wants to kill Ayan Hirsi Ali, then, because of her apostacy? The bombs on the London underground were just the result of some nutcases? Ib Warraq changed his hame for nothing? One of the most prominent Muslim ideologies in Britain today regularly calls non-Muslim fellow-citizens kuffar? And it’s just a cultural matter that Muslim women walk down British, Canadian, Australian and US streets bagged up so kuffars won’t look at them and go weak at the knees with desire? I think there’s a problem, and our multicultural ideal is leading us down a garden path, and we won’t like what we find in the garden shed, but we keep playing the old tolerance game as though this included people whose intolerance expresses itself in slogans like: “Kill anyone who calls Islam violent”.

My point still, for what it’s worth, is that the Muslim majority has not spoken, and so we don’t know what they think. Is it a quiet fifth column just waiting for the ‘extremists’ to lodge themselves more permanently, or do they hang their heads in embarrassment each time one of their nutcases says his ‘the ummah is the best society, created by God; the West is infidel, kuffar, and Islam is going to rule the world’? I’d like to know.

Eric, so if I´m a muslim and I have no problem accepting all secular laws and some bastard cries ‘Allah’ & blows all to smithereens – I am under obligation to say what I think. Isn´t that odd? I don’t see how you can put that in some form of secular law. Worse – if I shut up (say, because I´m interested in the soccer tournament) there´s a reason to think I´m a 5th column or a sleeper.

Why don’t we just put a star on them – whenever some idiot bombs us in Allahs name & we don’t see them crying wolf – it´s off with them, just to be safe.

Kind of reminds me of a couple of good episodes in 24. You can´t argue such a position, I can understand why you say so but it´s simply not on – nobody can be under an obligation to do anything, just because somebody else beloning to a same group has done a bad thing.

Mind you, my hypothetical Ali does not come out & say: this is awful but it´s nothing to do with Islam. He just goes & watches soccer (or she).

By the way – why never refer to Turkey & always to Saudi Arabia. Is it a ploy to help Saudis to defend their view as the view?

JoB, I never suggested making it a law that the majority responds. However, in a democracy, one expects that majority voices will be heard. If they are not heard, then there is a reason for it, that’s all. And if the reason is that they are afraid of the militants, then we are in trouble, no matter what the majority think.

But it is not a matter of law, and I never suggested that it should be. It is a matter of moral courage, if you like. A few, like Ayan Hirsi Ali, have come out and said: No, this will not do. But where are the rest of them? Why does she need to hide? Has there been a chorus of Muslims saying, ‘Let her alone. She has a right to her opinion’? No? Then, we have a problem.

So far, since the days of Ataturk, Turkey has been a secular democracy. That is now under threat, I think, but I am still hoping. Saudi Arabia is not a secular democracy. In fact, it is a religious state, where the religious police have real power. They can even force school girls to die in a fire to avoid being seen in an unacceptable state of (un)dress. If the Saudis can defend that, and think it is appropriate, then their brand of Islam deserves everyone’s contempt. If they do not seek to defend it, then it’s about time for a change. Nevertheless, Saudi influence around the world is very strong. Why deny it? It’s generally known.

Your friend Ali should pay attention to what is going on around him, and if he doesn’t, and allows a minority of idiots to speak for Islam, then he shouldn’t be surprised to find Islam widely disparaged. No, I don’t think it’s odd to expect majorities to speak up for themselves, if they are really majorities.

Eric, fair enough, but I let you know that Ali is profoundly uninterested in what people think of Islam & profoundly interested in whether Germany will beat Croatia. Many people here still marry according to Catholic ritual & they don´t make noise when he decries contraception. The point is, I guess, that we should not fault Ali. He is the exact embodiment of progress in that his religion happens to be his religion & that´s that. We should not force him to be militant because that is exactly what´s wrong with many of his fellow muslims, they are bloody militant. So, no, Ali shouldn’t anything escept abide by the law of his land (if it is a secular land).

Please don’t think I sympathize with Islam. I just think Ali & Turkey are examples demonstrating we need not be forcing everybody´s hand because of the many rotten hands.

Okay, but whose fault is this? I don’t think it’s quite as simple as you’re making it out to be. Muslims don’t control the Western press, after all. We have legal free speech, but news is still a business, and some kinds of news sell more than others. A Muslim advocating sharia law is going to sell more papers than a Muslim woman saying “well, no, I quite like my equal rights, thanks,” simply because it’s more sensationalist.

But the US’s rather unmeasured response is due, in the first instance, to the attack by Al Quaeda on New York and Washington.

U.S. involvement in the Middle East predates the attacks by Al Qaeda and is in fact responsible for Al Qaeda existing in the first place, as well as being the stated rationale (NOT a moral justification, to be 100% clear) for the 9/11 attacks.

Finally, the Orient is not a racial category. The Orient for Said included Indians as well as Arabs, Persians as well as Turks.

Well, yes, and the Europeans saw all of these as racial subgroups of one big racial group, “the Oriental.” Chinese and Japanese were “Far East Orientals,” their own racial group.

Said just believed that all Westerners had it in for all Easterners (Orientals).

I think he believed that Western culture as a whole had it in for Easterners, not all Westerners. I don’t think that’s such a far-fetched proposition, given the history of colonialism.

Finally, of course there’s racism and anti-Semitism in the Middle East among Muslims, especially against foreign servants in Saudi Arabia, as Ophelia points out. Arab Muslims have themselves been imperialist enslavers of Africans and others. Said doesn’t talk about these distinctions, to my recollection, and that is fair game for criticism. I certainly don’t mean to deny the existence of these forms of oppression and prejudice in the Middle East.

The C in “In Cod we trust” is intentional. I am an atheist (more of an antitheist, actually). I wouldn’t worship or submit to JHWE or Allah if they revealed themselves in whatever glory and shovelled a burning bush down my throat.

Why God(s)? I do have the privilege to interact with a lot of men and women whom I judge to be vastly more virtuous than the vain, petty, unpredictable, jalous and cruel deities in the scripture(s).

I know I am an irritatingly sloppy writer (unfortunately when writing on the computer, I am fairly accurate when writing by hand).

So: I write sloppy on a non-native tongue: I do realise that some of my points are missed.

By the way, if anyone insists that there is a god “in charge” on earth, methinks Kurt Vonnegut has given the best description(and even added a human(sic) twist):

GAUI: God Allmighty, the Utmost Indifferent.

GAUI has one single commandment: PEOPLE! Please be good to each other, then God Allmighty the Utmost Indifferent will take care of HIMSELF.

:-)

With the exception of some (assumed) minor and larger tantrums where the modus operandi is strikingley similar to terrorist attacks (-including an obvious disregard for hitting innocents), I’d think the expression “utmost indifferent ” sums up the “empirical essence” of………..( fill in your favourite deity, here).

>>Categorising people based on a single aspect of their lives is not only simplistic and lazy, it’s pretty-much fascistic.

What then should one make of surveys and other studies that show increasing numbers of muslims in many countries- over 80% in Malaysia, for example, – citing their religious identity as far more important than other aspects of their identity? If increasing numbers of muslims themselves feel their religious identity to be overwhelmingly important and give public voice to that consciousness, is it right to dismiss this as merely a defensive reaction to “western provocation”?

One difference is that self-definition is not the same as having one imposed on you.

I did not mean to imply that such identification is due to ‘western intervention’ is the cause of this. However, reporting tends to emphasise the ‘differences’ (after all, why would such a question be present on a survey) rather than common threads. uurgh, that sounded very touchy-feely. But headlines stating “People think their families are important – Worldwide!” aren’t going to sell papers.